Materials

Uphance allows you to specify the raw material components of your products and then calculate and export your total materials requirement to cover sales (customer orders) or production (manufacturing).

Before specifying components of products, you'll need to add some materials to your materials database.

Add a material

Select Raw Materials from your left main vertical menu.
Click the + button at the top-right to open the new material dialog:

Figure 1:

On the Raw Material dialog shown above,

Type the name of your material in the Material name field.
Type the Color of your material in the Color field.
Type the sizes for this raw material (small, medium, large or S, M, L, etc.)
Specify a Width.

Material Details

Next you will want to specify the details of your material.

Add an image by clicking on the plus sign.
Select a category (e.g. leather, insoles, etc.)
Add optional material description.

Figure 2:

Variations

Next you will want to specify the colors (if applicable), suppliers (optional) and customs information on the Variations tab.

Figure 3:

Add Colors for your Raw Materials:

To add colors to your raw materials,

Type the Color name in the column field
Click on the grey box under Swatch Color
Select your color from the graphics -- or if it is not present, you can manually type the hex code in the blank field to the right.
To add additional colors, select the + plus sign Add a variation on the top right.
Once all your colors are added, click Save.

See also our Product Swatch Images and Standard Colors Knowledge Article for additional information.

Adding Suppliers and Unit Cost

Adding a supplier is optional. If you choose to include a supplier:

Be sure to specify the per unit pricing in the supplier's currency.
Specify the exchange rate to use for costing.
And, add a supplier reference code.

Supplier details are stored alongside customer and manufacturer details in your companies database. See our Knowledge Articles on adding Manufacturers.

Adding Raw Materials to Your Products

Once you add Raw Materials to Uphance, you are ready to associate them with your Products. See our Knowledge Articles on Products:

Manage your Products

Managing Products - Manage the life cycle of your products
Creating/Editing a New Product - Create a new Product & enter (or edit) Product details
Product Images - Uploading Product Images to your products
Swatch Images, Standard Colors - Specify or upload your swatch images and/or standard colors
Product Variations with Pricing, Production & Shipping, Display Order, Warehouse Locations, SKUs, Raw Materials and eCommerce

Searching for Materials

Use the Search and Filter features from you Raw Materials screen to quickly locate your raw materials. Click on the "All product seasons" filter to narrow down your search for raw materials that were used in a product within a specific season. If your raw material has not been associated with any products, you will not see that raw material on any of the seasons. You would have to associate the raw material with the product first.

Deleting a material

To delete a material from your materials database:

Navigate to the Raw Materials page.
Click the Material's Details Tab.
Click the "Retired" button as shown in Figure 2 above.
Click the "Update Material" button to save your changes.

Please note that you cannot delete a material that is in use as a product component. To hide such a material you should edit the material details and set it as "retired".

Retiring a material

When you have previously used a material but no longer want to see the material appear in Uphance, you can "retire" the material to keep it hidden default. To do this:

Navigate to the relevant material details page.
Click the Material's Details Tab.
Click the "Retired" button as shown in Figure 2 above.
Click the "Update Material" button to save your changes.

Hidden materials

When you add a material in a size and associate it with a product, then you delete or retire that material, it may still show up in your Materials list; especially if it was previously used on orders or if it still remains as a material on some of your products. In these cases, the material will show up in your materials list as "hidden" with "strike through" text. See image example below:

Updates to pricing and currencies

Updates made to your material database will filter through to your product total costings. For example, updating a material unit price will update the unit price for that material on all products and variations referring to that material.

Similarly, when you update a supplier currency, the currency on the materials referring to that supplier will update. You should note that the exchange rate set on the materials will not automatically update. For example, if you update a supplier currency from EUR to USD and your home currency is set to GBP, you will need to go through your active materials for that supplier and reset the exchange rates to the desired value(s).